"Almost a decade after its première, 'Handmaid’s' retains its signature violence but has thoroughly exhausted its narrative premises...."

"Writing in the Reagan years, [novelist Margaret] Atwood imagined an authoritarianism of the repressive Christian variety. The sexual politics of our era’s conservatives are more prurient and boorish: the misogynists of Gilead say 'Blessed be the fruit'; ours say 'Grab ’em by the pussy.' Still, the sadism of the show’s fictional world finds ample comparisons in our own... In its early seasons, 'The Handmaid’s Tale' was criticized for what some saw as its self-indulgent scaremongering. The show, its detractors sneered, was trauma porn for middle-class women who wanted to see themselves as victims of the Trump age...."

Writes Moira Donegan, in "'The Handmaid’s Tale' Reflects the Exhaustion of Liberal Feminism/What’s most striking about the show, now in its final season, is not its hysteria but its lack of conviction" (The New Yorker).

"I only wanted to create a place for women to share their stories of harassment and assault without being needlessly discredited or judged."

Said Moira Donegan, quoted in "Writer on ‘Sh–ty Media Men’ list settles defamation suit with catalog creator" (NY Post).

I've blogged about this controversy a few times in the past. That's why I'm blogging the settlement, the terms of which are not disclosed. Well, that and the quote in the post title, which is an eloquent counterpoint to the law of defamation.

"Real life is beginning to mimic college tribunals. When the perpetrator of an anonymous list accusing dozens of men of a whole range of sexual misdeeds..."

"... is actually celebrated by much of mainstream media (see this fawning NYT profile), you realize that we are living in another age of the Scarlet Letter. Moira Donegan has yet to express misgivings about possibly smearing the innocent — because the cause is far more important than individual fairness. Besides, if they’re innocent, they’ll be fine! Ezra Klein has openly endorsed campus rules that could frame some innocent men. One of the tweets in response to some of my recent writing on this has stuck in my mind ever since: 'can anyone justify why the POSSIBLE innocence of men is so much more important than the DEFINITE safety and comfort of women?' And yet this principle of preferring ten guilty people to go free rather than one innocent person to be found guilty was not so long ago a definition of Western civilization.... The goal of our culture now is not the emancipation of the individual from the group, but the permanent definition of the individual by the group. We used to call this bigotry. Now we call it being woke. You see: We are all on campus now."

From "We All Live on Campus Now" by Andrew Sullivan at New York Magazine.

"I live among educated liberals in a diverse academic setting. Although the #MeToo backlash has a voice online..."

"... it has no voice in real life, in my opinion. It is not possible to talk about any nuance right now, for fear of retribution or being marked backwards. In my circles, the only permitted response is to nod quietly in full support of #MeToo and #TimesUp. Saying anything about it, trying to understand context, inject nuance, etc. is about as welcome as suggesting that another person comb their child's hair differently."

Writes a commenter named Tamarine Hautmarche on a NYT op-ed "Go Ahead, Criticize #MeToo" by Michelle Goldberg, which is reacting to the Katie Roiphe piece in Harper's, "The Other Whisper Network/How Twitter feminism is bad for women."

I haven't read the Roiphe piece, even though I'd noticed it the other day. I didn't remember the big controversy about it, though I had blogged about it a few weeks ago. (It involved the possible outing of the author of "Shitty Media Men"). And, in fact, I can't read it now unless I buy a Harper's subscription.

Anyway, Goldberg thinks people, including Katie Roiphe, are overdoing their expressions of fear about on-line mobs. Even though "social media is a grotesque netherworld of bad faith and cruelty," they can still speak, because look at all of the expressions of "discomfort with #MeToo" that are out there.

Moira Donegan, the young woman who put the "Shitty Media Men" spreadsheet on line.

"I was watching the spreadsheet fill up. It became clear to me that a problem I had already understood as widespread was in fact, much, much broader."

DONEGAN: “So much of the conversation after the spreadsheet was made public was about the methodology of the spreadsheet, and sort of the tactics that anonymous women were using to try and keep each other safe. People were more worried about a hypothetical man whose reputation might be damaged than real women who were really raped.”

TIEFENTHÄLER: “It’s not a hypothetical man, right? There were men who were named on this who had to suffer repercussions in their real life.”

DONEGAN: “Some companies decided to conduct investigations. Not all, but some of them did result in men leaving their jobs or being fired, because they were found to have committed wrongdoing. I think it’s their responsibility that they acted that way.”

Andrew Sullivan says "It’s Time to Resist the Excesses of #MeToo."

Excerpt from a long column:

I’ve read [Shitty Media Men] list — as almost everyone in media has. I felt like taking a shower afterward. It includes charges that have absolutely nothing to do with workplace harassment. Someone is accused of “creepy DMs or texts especially when drunk,” “weird lunch dates,” or “being handsy — at the very least — with women at parties.” One man is accused of “secretly removing condom during sex,” with no claim of workplace misconduct at all. Another is damned for “flirting,” another for taking “credit for ideas of women of color,” another for “multiple employee affairs, inappropriate conversation, in general a huge disgusting sleaze ball.” And this chorus of minor offenses is on the same list as brutal rapes, physical assaults, brazen threats, unspeakable cruelty, violence, and misogyny. But hey, take it all with a grain of salt!

The act of anonymously disseminating serious allegations about people’s sex lives as a means to destroy their careers and livelihoods has long gone by a simple name. It’s called McCarthyism, and the people behind the list engaged in it. Sure, they believed they were doing good — but the McCarthyites, in a similar panic about communism, did as well. They believe they are fighting an insidious, ubiquitous evil — the patriarchy — just as the extreme anti-Communists in the 1950s believed that commies were everywhere and so foul they didn’t deserve a presumption of innocence, or simple human decency. They demand public confessions of the guilty and public support for their cause … or they will cast suspicion on you as well....

... I’ll tell you what’s also brave at the moment: to resist this McCarthyism, to admit complexity, to make distinctions between offenses, to mark a clear boundary between people’s sexual conduct in a workplace and outside of it, to defend due process, to defend sex itself, and privacy, and to rely on careful reporting to expose professional malfeasance. In this nihilist moment when Bannonites and left-feminists want simply to burn it all down, it’s especially vital to keep a fire brigade in good order.

"In October, I created a Google spreadsheet called 'Shitty Media Men' that collected a range of rumors and allegations of sexual misconduct, much of it violent, by men in magazines and publishing."

Writes Moira Donegan at The Cut, motivated by what seems to have been an impending outing by Harper's Magazine.

I was incredibly naïve when I made the spreadsheet. I was naïve because I did not understand the forces that would make the document go viral. I was naïve because I thought that the document would not be made public, and when it became clear that it would be, I was naïve because I thought that the focus would be on the behavior described in the document, rather than on the document itself. It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that I really thought this. But I did....

In the weeks after the spreadsheet was exposed, my life changed dramatically.... This escalated when I learned Katie Roiphe would be publishing my name in a forthcoming piece in Harper’s magazine. In early December, Roiphe had emailed me to ask if I wanted to comment for a Harper’s story she was writing on the “feminist moment.” She did not say that she knew I had created the spreadsheet. I declined and heard nothing more from Roiphe or Harper’s until I received an email from a fact checker with questions about Roiphe’s piece. “Katie identifies you as a woman widely believed to be one of the creators of the Shitty Men in Media List,” the fact checker wrote. “Were you involved in creating the list? If not, how would you respond to this allegation?” The next day, a controversy ensued on Twitter after Roiphe’s intention to reveal my identity was made public. People who opposed the decision by Harper’s speculated about what would happen to me as a result of being identified. They feared that I would be threatened, stalked, raped, or killed. The outrage made it seem inevitable that my identity would be exposed even before the Roiphe piece ran. All of this was terrifying. I still don’t know what kind of future awaits me now that I’ve stopped hiding....